


The five times Clint and Natasha didn’t have shit to avenge

by wildechilde17



Series: The business trilogy [19]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: A Roll In The Hay, Blow Jobs, Bows & Arrows, Clintasha - Freeform, F/M, Fairgrounds, Goodbye Sex, Lazy Sex, Light Dom/sub, Mixtape, Oral Sex, Popcorn, Porn Without Plot, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Rope Bondage, Semi-Public Sex, Sex in a Car, Sex on a Car, Wall Sex, dammit plot got in my porn, the futurist everybody, you are giving wanda a migraine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-03-29 06:36:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13921443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildechilde17/pseuds/wildechilde17
Summary: This chapter owes itself in some small part to this fan art http://transparentlyfallingasleep.tumblr.com/image/171719442481 which I believe is from this artist https://deannamb.tumblr.com/post/168542456018/dont-dont-even-try-to-steal-food-from-a-woman.  My apologies as crediting artists via Tumblr is something for which I am a virgin and if there is a proper referencing/attributing format please don't hesitate to let me know.Happy Easter to all of you who partake in this religious celebration or indeed the original pagan one.I hope to have a chapter of Starbucks up for you by Easter Monday too.





	1. Bremer county

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Firewater](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Firewater).



She never informs him of her visits before the drive becomes a dust comet around whatever nondescript car she has appropriated this time.

The last three days have been long and hot and he wipes his face with the edge of his t-shirt before she climbs out of the black SUV. The humidity has hit breaking point. The deep grey on the horizon and the zing against his skin when he is still tells him that a thunderstorm is rolling in. He’ll let the dam break open but then he knows exactly where he is taking her tonight. She came just in time.

“World not ending then?” he says.

She pulls a bag out of the back and pushes her sunglasses up to her hairline.

“Maybe I just wanted to see you…” she says.

“New kids driving you nuts? You sick of stopping yourself from whacking their feet with bamboo rods already?”

She shoves her bag hard against his chest, “Maybe I’m here to bring you back in.”

“Nah, bags too heavy for a one-day trip and...” He jiggles it testing its weight, “not heavy enough for pliers and thumbscrews.”

“Is that what it would take?” she asks softly.

He drops the bag and pulls her in. He knows he smells like sweat and the drywall that flakes in his hair. “You know exactly what it would take,” he says. He kisses her. “I’ll turn the power back on. You can have a shower when the water’s hot.”

“And you?”

“I’ll grab one when you’ve used it all up.” He follows her through the doorway the screen door yawning shut behind him.

“Why’s the power off?”

“I was gonna put in a new light.”

“Don’t you need an electrician?”

“Years of watching me fix those trick arrows and you ask me that?”

She turns, “Years of watching you land in dumpsters… I ask you that.”

“Good to see you, Red,” he chuckles.

“Good to see you, ястреб.”

She leans into the open fridge like she owns it. Clint suspects if she wanted to take it he’d let her. “Don’t eat anything. I got plans.”

She raises an eyebrow and looks mildly suspicious, “You didn’t know I was coming.”

“No, super spy,” he sighs, “I didn’t but now you’re here… we got plans.”

They don’t kick up any dust when they roll out in Clint’s truck, the earth’s damp and muddy and smells cleaner than mud has a right to. It drizzles and drools the entire trip, one failing wiper dragging the rain sheen across the window, smearing the oncoming headlights as it goes.

The mud sticks to her boots but the rain has stopped and the lights in the field aren’t yet lit up, hanging like Christmas lights from poll to poll, swinging in the breeze. There is the dense smell of herd animals in confined spaces and corn dogs in the air and it takes him back to being fourteen more that any photo or story ever could.

He’ll stop smiling when he gets over the way her eyes grew large when she realized where he was taking her.

Past the entrance way a group of teenagers slump, shoving into each other in hoodies and long shorts because the temperature has dropped but no one is admitting they feel the cold. He’s watches one of them, greasy hair and a carefully numb expression, produce a flask proudly labelled with the Kum & Go logo and dump its contents into his friend’s diet soda cans. They ignore him and look Natasha up and down as she passes, elbowing each other and making low monkey hoots.

The blue and orange banner above their heads features corn and the county name but it’s tangled up on on itself in the storm and you can only make out the B and R before its swallowed up by white canvas backing.

In the midway carnival he tugs on the loose tail of his shirt that she is wearing. Its loose in the arms and tight across her chest so she leaves it unbuttoned over a singlet. He pulls her back towards a cotton candy vendor and pulls down a bag of vivid pink fluff to hand her as he forks over crumpled dollar bills.

It’s the cotton candy that undoes him. He weathers the ways she presses herself into his side in the ghost train and the rollercoaster. He survives the eating of the corn dog. He has ignored the tight curls of damp hair around her neck and the low dip of her top. Hell, he even bared the way she took one shot with the air rifle, grinned wickedly, adjusted for the terrible sight and the deliberate pull to the left and wiped out every single tin bird in the place. It’s the cotton candy and the way she licks the tip of each wisp and looks so intent as the crystals appear, darken and melt away with her salvia. It’s the little moan she is sure to make when she puts the wisp on her very pink tongue.

“That’s a dangerous game, Natasha,” he growls into her hair and the last of dusk triggers the timed lights.

She looks up at him, midway lights twinkling in her eyes, “How dangerous?”

He lifts his brow and strides away. She follows.

He weaves in and out of fair goers until he gets to the dodgem cars and then he ducks down the makeshift alley way and behind the back of the booth. The floor is a small one and the line extends a little way back out into the main thoroughfare. The ride is blasting out 70’s and 80’s rock and a gangly guy in a trucker hat is jumping from car to car to shift the gridlock made by boys intent on head on collisions.

He grabs her arm as she follows heading out towards the field. He jerks her up against the ply wood backing of the ride. “Could be more dangerous,” he says and brushes her hair away from her neck.

She doesn’t reply. She leans into him and licks the dip where his neck meets his shoulder. He feels his body temperature drop suddenly and then there are teeth where her tongue was. He hisses and pushes her back against the less than sturdy wall as Journey begins to shout about small town girls and city boys out of speakers trying to compete with screams and grinding gears.

She parts her lips, they curl. His hand is on her breast. He squeezes. He is not gentle.

Her hand is quick. She has undone his belt, his fly and wrapped fingers around him before he has sucked her bottom lip into the wet heat of his mouth. She tastes of pink sugar crystals and has the dexterity of a women trained to take firearms apart blindfolded.

He is hard even before he has met her tongue with his own.

This is a risk. They will be fast and harsh. He hasn’t felt this alive in months.

He pushes her breasts upwards feeling the tight knot of nipples slip from the cups beneath her undershirt. Her mouth stills as she unbuttons her own fly.

He wants to tear open her clothing and see her naked in the dying light. He aches at the image in his head of her vulnerable and yet so strong in this public place and for an instant entirely his. It slips away, he can feel the heat come off her skin, her mouth moves again.

He slides his hands down the curve of her arse, dragging it free of her jeans. He feels the contraction of muscles as his hands find the indent of thigh and glut, he lifts and separates. His fingertips are damp.

Natasha groans into his mouth and he surges forward. Her hand over his cock is almost flat against his stomach.

When he lifts she follows. She is a ballerina in spirt, in focus, in her attention to detail. The thump of rubber and metal, the tinny refrain of strangers waiting do their best to cover for the heavy thunk of her against the unfinished particle board. She cannot wrap her legs around him trapped within her tangle of jeans and moist cotton.

She guides him home. It feels like sinking.

They no longer kiss. When he thrust up into her they are both open mouthed, millimeters away, breathing in almost synchronicity. His senses tangle. He doesn’t hear her soft groans he feels them on the surface of his skin, in the muscular clench around his cock. He doesn’t see her anymore he can hear the coils of her red hair longer than it was the last time. He can hear it ring out like bow strings. Her finger tips against the divots in his lower back are electricity and dry ice.

Her cheek is pressed against his bicep as it holds her to the wall. His hands are in the nest of hair dragging curls from the hair tie with each thrust. At the apex, it is pain and ecstasy and the world narrows to movement, pressure and a hot wet heat.

His hand slips. She is faint vibration but catches his head with her hand and pulls him against her shoulder. He leaves wet breath on the checkered pattern.

She clenches, a sequence of contractions he has no way of knowing are voluntary or involuntary. He hears the grunts he makes. He closes his eyes.

They are both laughing those dry hiccoughed laughs as they catch their breath and do what they can to clean up without moving apart.

“Yeah, okay, that one’s on me,” she says against his ear lobe.

“Ya think?” He grins, leans back with their hips still joined and hoots.

There is a moment in her eyes, something has fallen into place and he doesn’t ask what it is.


	2. The den: Sunday afternoon

Things that you need to know about Natasha Romanoff, not her real name, if she even has a real name: Natasha Romanoff steals clothing.

Clint wonders idly if this is because she never internalized the concept of sole ownership of utilities or because it is some kind of widowy power move.  Clint only wonders this at all because at this moment she is blocking Dog Cops in a pair of his running shorts.  They are very loose on her.  He wonders less idly if she has anything beneath them. Or he would, if the running shorts and the giant bowl of popcorn she’s carrying wasn’t blocking the finale of his favorite show. 

He picks up one of his mismatched discarded socks, balls it and throws it at her.  She catches it, single handed, without looking. 

“Move your ass.”

“Move your head,” she answers. She lands herself at the other end of the couch and tucks the popcorn between her body and its fraying arm. 

He snorts out a lazy non reply.

When Dog Cops finishes he fishes for the remote.  It has fallen and wedged itself between couch cushions.  He flicks through the screens looking for something other than credits to watch. 

He reaches for the popcorn. His gesture is greeted with a set of toes pressed perfectly against his temple.  The lock of her knee and the arch of her foot extending the distance until the bowl is just out of his reach. 

“Nat…”

“…tasha.” she whines the completion of her own name, an exaggeration, then punctuates it with an open mouth crunch of the corn. 

He rolls his head, turns into her unvarnished ballet angled foot and licks.

She drops her leg; it lands heavily on his thigh. “Barton!”

“All’s fair, baby.”  He snatches at the popcorn, she blocks.

The new television balances precariously on a box full of old books.

“Love? Or War?” 

“Both. It’s always both,” he says before lunging again. 

It occurs to Clint soon after that Oliver Platt did a very good Porthos and that Natasha’s trade mark move is damn effective at confirming that his running shorts are the only thing between her and Eden. 

War isn’t working out.  He quits.  Love it is. 

He kisses her thigh.  She releases him, leans back against the arm of the couch, bows her body with the hamstrings of a goddess of the hunt and presses all her toes into his forehead.  He leans forward using his one advantage in close quarters combat, weight.

She bears her teeth like this is the popcorn mountain she is willing to die on. He reaches up captures her feet and begins his slow climb.

He kisses her in step, he kisses each ankle.  She regards him cynically beneath furrowed brows.  He parts her legs and tugs her forward.  She rolls her eyes once as she settles against the tangle of quilt and cushions. The bowl and popcorn tips and clatters on the unfinished floorboards.

She looks bored, with affected sleepiness she turns her head toward the screen and the sword fight that clangs across it.  She raises one elegant leg and lowers the other.  Access granted, in the lowest energy way possible.  He sighs and continues to kiss. 

When he reaches the edge of his shorts he lets his fingers graze the highest reaches of her thigh.  She grumbles and shifts.  Athos remarks, “My god, he’s still alive.” Natasha collects several untouched kernels from the over turned bowl and chews.  He brushes lightly under the fabric of the shorts, separating the very edge of her lips with the tip of his index finger.  He teases the heated flesh, one eye still on the action on the screen.

He almost misses the scowl.

Her foot is in his crotch, much more gentle than the scowl would suggest. Her nimble toes work at the rapidly engorging flesh beneath his boxers.  Toes start to tug on the elasticated waist band to the sound of horse’s hooves and anachronistic American shouting.

When he groans her name the scowl disappears and she smiles. He leans further forward and blows hot air up the loose leg of his shorts.

“I’m watching the TV,” she says so dryly it could be used for kindling.

“Yeah?” he says.  He does not look at where her toes are currently wreaking havoc.  He reaches out to tug down on the running shorts that began this lazy Sunday enterprise. “Me too.”

 She wriggles, “I’m not comfortable.”  He pauses, ‘I can make you more comfortable’ is on his lips but she shifts, a tumble too quick and dramatic for her tone.  With no thought, his hands are in the air above his head as feet and head position are swapped in the small space of a couch he should have ditched back when he said he was gonna fix this place up.

She settles head on his lap, knees bent, malicious toes dangling in the air.

“Comfortable?”

“Mmm,” she says and he supposes that she has decided to maintain the pretence of apathy.  He’d tell her it’s not a turn on.  But, fuck it, everything she does is a turn on. 

Especially that.

“Natasha!” he bites out and jerks away from her hand.  “Butter fine.  Salt not fine.  Very much not fine!”

“Fix it then,” she says. She flicks her hand away from the sensitive skin she was previously assaulting.  He groans, she presses her fingers to his lips and without a word she commands him.  

He still rolls his eyes before he licks the salt from her skin. He is not yet a mindless automaton designed for her pleasure.  Not yet, he thinks, as her mouth wraps around his cock.  It’s a close run thing.

He sucks hard on her ring finger, some deep recess of his lizard brain refusing to let go lest the suction he craves also stops.  Blow job magical thinking.

His hand comes to rest on the curve of her ass. He doesn’t think, he just strokes across the surface of the dying fabric and then under seeking heat, seeking skin.

Somewhere in the rise and fall of her head her finger pops ridiculously from his mouth like an advertisement for lollipops that would get banned before it hit the screen. Her elegant fingertips returning to the teasing creep beneath his boxers to the balls that draw upwards towards her touch and towards damnation. 

On the television, the men in large feathered hats blur and the only sound he can hear is the thump, thump, thump of his blood in his ears.

Maybe he grunts as the upward jerk of his hips becomes unstoppable, he probably grunts.  He slaps her uncovered ass once, the only warning he can manage and then there is only the endless suck and swipe of tongue.

Of all the fluids that have ever spirted forth from him this is his favorite. Though the head rush is much the same as blood loss.

She tucks him back beneath his black boxers more kindly than the incident with the salt would predict.  She pulls his shorts back over her own ass. She curls on her side, the soft mess of red curls resting against the new hollowness in his belly.  

His heart rate begins to slow. His eyes drop to her body; it looks as boneless and lazy as this Sunday.  He is awed by her.

“Wait!”  she says after a yawn. “Tim Curry’s in this?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter owes itself in some small part to this fan art http://transparentlyfallingasleep.tumblr.com/image/171719442481 which I believe is from this artist https://deannamb.tumblr.com/post/168542456018/dont-dont-even-try-to-steal-food-from-a-woman. My apologies as crediting artists via Tumblr is something for which I am a virgin and if there is a proper referencing/attributing format please don't hesitate to let me know. 
> 
> Happy Easter to all of you who partake in this religious celebration or indeed the original pagan one. 
> 
> I hope to have a chapter of Starbucks up for you by Easter Monday too.


	3. Barn

He has always liked the way an arrow slides out from the butt when he pulls it just so, the grip and then the sudden give. The last arrow comes clean away. He twirls it between his thumb and index finger as he walks back to the end of the barn. Longer distance drills can be done when Natasha up and goes again. It doesn’t do to let lie fallow though. 

Clint throws the target arrows down. They sink into the detritus and soil. They vibrate like violin strings for an instant. He sniffs at the Henley he’d dragged on before sun up. It stinks and he wonders how long it has been beneath the bed. He sighs and pulls the back of its neck up and over his head. He’s warm enough now anyway.

He draws his first arrow from the ground next to the ball of used up Henley. He breathes deep, draws, back muscles tighten, the world vanishes in the process of draw and loose. The snap of the bow string sounds like the slide of steel guitar strings to him the almost instantaneously thunk of metal arrow head hitting dense straw is a kick drum. And despite the instrumentation, practice becomes hymn.

“Seriously?! With the abs and...” she says before his final arrow can be loosed. 

“Tasha.”

“I thought you’d retired.” It isn’t a question.

“It’s what I am,” he says as he drops the bow.

“No, it isn’t, Clint Barton,” she says. He walks towards her. She is silhouetted by the still early rising sun.

He shrugs. “It’s what I do.” He stands close enough to touch her. She takes the arrow from his hand, examining it like she is buying time. “If l’m not this, if I’m not the best at...” he says lowly, his breath hitting the curve of her neck, “that means I’ve just been kidding myself, thinking I could keep up with super soldiers and geniuses.”

She sucks in air like it’s a sigh. She shakes her head without ever looking up at him. She is only wearing a loose fitting tank top, hers not his. It is all low dips exposing scapula, décolletage and the swell of breast alike. She wears old jeans hacked into shorts, frayed and soft and designed expensively to look just so. She is plains of pale skin. His fingers itch with the need to fan across every inch of it.

He bends his head to kiss her. She wets her bottom lip. It darkens. And then with growl she is kissing him with teeth and heavy breath. Natasha is walking him backwards through the bay but he barely acknowledges it or the dropped arrow. His hands are on her hips, her stomach, they curl around the racer back. They strain, wanting cup themselves around the exposed roundness of her breasts. Her lips are full and soft at the corner of his open mouth and his jaw, at his Adam’s apple.

They are at the edge of the hay loft now and with a jump she is around his waist. The weight and heat of her both pleasure and pain. His hands are wrapped around her ass and her thighs are tight on his hips. She wrenches her mouth from his. His face must be a wordless complaint by the way she grins.

She looks up.  He can’t help but follow her gaze.  Above them is the old hay track and fork he’d relocated inside and the thick loop of rope he’d hung from it for climbing and suspension sit ups.  She leans back, grips his hands and with the strength in her thighs alone supports herself as she raises his arms above his head.  She nudges and steers him into looping his hands into the rope. 

He tugs downwards, the rough weave of rope rubs against his wrists.  Her mouth is on his again.  He knows by the the curl of her lips that she is still smiling, cat like, though he closed his eyes.  When she pulls away again his eyes open her face too close to his to be anything more than sharp green eyes and the blur of very very faint freckles across the bridge of her nose. 

She looks up at his arms straining against the rope and asks “Yes?”

He swallows.  He could be out of the loop that pretends to bind him in factions of a second. “Yes,” he answers.

She pushes her hands into his shoulders, unwraps her legs from his hips and is on the ground, landing as lightly as she climbs.  She walks back towards the open barn door. His breath hitches in his chest as some part of him decides she will leave. 

As if she hears it, she turns back looking over her shoulder. She smiles again.

At the entrance, she bends at the waist, slowly reaching for the arrow. He twists, watching the dramatic elongation of her calves, hamstrings, the curve of her ass barely concealed in shorts that may have been designed for comfort but seem to him, right this second, to be designed to titillate and frustrate in equal measure.   

She rises just as slowly and walks, a sway in her hips, back toward him. The barn creaks. The air smells dry and almost sweet as it filters down through the hay loft. She reaches him and tilting her head runs the edge of the index fletch down his cheek.

“I know all of you,” she says and she says it like it’s a threat.

The feather continues its path over his collar bone towards his pectoral muscles.  It should tickle with how light she is being but as he strains against the heavy rope he feels as if his skin is alight. Her slightest touch is enough to raise his heart beat. When she gets to his right nipple she stops. She tilts the arrow pressing the notched end of the nock into the sensitive skin just so.

“Do you think I would have you if you were only an arrow and a target?” she says as she presses a little harder. He doesn’t answer.  He watches as the arrow draws back in her hand, a moment of relief before it spins in her hand.  Arrow head down.

Her lips are parted and she draws in soft breath over the darkened hue of her lips and tongue.  She is poised concentration as she slides the very point of his arrow, head down, across his taut abdomen. It is like the moment he takes the shot, suddenly the only noise left in his mind is the song made by the fine point of the arrow's glide across his skin. It has been all noise for days. 

She presses her lips to the path it took.  Soft and nebulous where there had been sharp clarity. A slight sting of salt into the fine scratch she has made.  

At the indent of his hips she stops, hovers arrow and lips too close and too far from his skin. She places the arrow gently between her teeth.  Her eyes are hooded, lashes and opaque intention shielding her from his gaze.  Abruptly, she pulls his track pants from his hips. 

He shivers as she rises slowly, her body heat a wave that follows her movement over naked thigh, hip to his chest.  He is hard and he wonders how long she will make him remain so.  She moves behind him.  He cannot see now what she intends to do with him. 

He should feel fear or at very least some anxiety, hypervigilance, he should want to pull his hands from the rope.  She slides the flat of her hand around the curve of his waist. It is the part of him he thinks of as plastic.  Once there was a scar there.  It was the tipping point. It is gone now. Her warm hand is wrapped around the absence and the memory.  And like the arrow leaving the dense straw he gives in to her. He closes his eyes and lets his arms cease their battle. 

Her fingernail runs the length of his spine, it stops at the cleft of his cheeks. Time drags with only his increasing hardness as a mile marker for how long she makes him wait.  She tests the weight of him, he does not hold back the muscle contraction it causes in his glutes. Then there are feathers, then the sharp drag of arrow head and fingernails. She seems determined to make every inch of him feel alive. 

When her hand comes down hard against his ass he can’t say he is surprised.  He is however surprised by the grunt that escapes him, he is no stranger to torture, assault, sparring with the Black Widow. She has opened him in too many ways to count. 

He counts five more stinging whacks before she pushes apart his thighs and slides between them. His eyes are still closed. There is a faint clucking sound outside the barn increasing the surreal quality to the drama unfolding within. He is grateful that it is only her finger nail that traces the ridge on the underside of his cock and not an arrow tip.

He knows that her fingers have reached his head, weeping with precum, when she leans forward and whispers like a rising storm, “Do you trust me?”

She has two maybe three fingers balanced on the head of his cock.  He would do anything if she would wrap her hand around him. Instead, he opens his eyes.  She is watching him, waiting.  He wets his lips. “Yes.” 

“Do you believe me?” she says. 

“Yes.”

She kisses him then.  It is uncontrolled where she had been all control moments before.  In the heat of her mouth, in the sounds of their gasps, he pulls his hands from the rope.

At first his hands are in her hair pulling her up on her toes so that he can gain greater access to her maddening mouth but then they are cupped around her ass drawing her up so that he can be enveloped by the warmth of her once again.  He no longer cares if the roughness of the denim against his ragging flesh will bring pain as well as pleasure. All Clint Barton wants now is to sink himself into the truth of her. She has made it quiet again.

In the hay, he pushes aside the denim between her thighs with slippery fingers. He thrusts into her. Every thrust is matched by prickles of straw into his thighs and forearms.  Her hair catches between her lips as a peach pink nipple escapes the edge of her tank top. It is peaked and hard. Her lips are swollen and her eyes are darkened but she is Natasha and he is laid bare for her. 


	4. F Series Truck

Two things you need to know.  

Firstly, Natasha Romanoff collects old electronics. She is weirdly obsessive about how they work and how she can make them work for her. Drop the girl in 1982 and she’d have no trouble building a time machine out of an Atari, of that he is certain. It’s an affinity for computers and boxy things that whirl and bing that he barely manages to keep up with and one, she somehow has managed to not so much hide as camouflage in front of Tony Stark the king of whirls and bings. 

Secondly, F series trucks need a lot of maintenance when you ditch them on the regular for illegal border hopping in quinjets and helicarriers. 

She has found a tape deck that should be water damaged and irreparable.  He is sure of two things, she likes it when he gets grease on his arms and she isn’t going to let outdated technology that’s been suffering from exposure longer than they’ve been partners, stop her. 

She is mostly silent as she works with only the metal on metal sounds of soldering and screwing as any real proof that she is still working. 

He isn’t silent.  Doesn’t really like the silence.  Too much room for everything else in the silence. He hums and sings to himself, fills the air with the occasional drumming on the panels while he chooses the next engine part to remove and clean and hope to god that does the trick. He is drumming away when the music starts up. 

It’s not the best sound, it’s got a little staticy reverb in the speakers like something is frying but, damn, if she hasn’t got it running. 

He recognizes the beat even before the through line kicks in. It takes a moment to place the song and then Dee Snider is singing, ‘can’t seem to show you how much I care’ and it’s like peeing in a wet suit, a warm rush that makes him look up from the fuel line. “Hey, I haven’t heard this in years. I used to love this song.”

“Evidently,” she says at the work bench, “Who is Dawn?”

“Dawn?”

“Dawn, you rock the known world.” She turns to face him, “It’s written on the tape.”

“Dawn?” he says drawing a blank. Twisted Sister is ramping up, ‘believe me when I try to say, I’ll never, never…’ he frowns trying to place the name. ‘go away!’

 “I dunno, maybe?”  The music swings through the chorus. She watches him with a single raised brow.  “Oh. No.” he says with sudden cold realisation. “Aw Mixtape. No.”

“Mixtape?”

“Shut it down, Tasha,” he tries, knowing even before he’s said it that it won’t work. She has an asymmetrical curl to her lips that speaks of new tortures a plenty. 

“And what in the world makes you think I would do that?”

“Tash,” he starts, stepping back from the old truck. 

The song comes to an abrupt ending.  It’s the kind you can only make recording straight from the radio.  The worst moment he decides much later on is the echoy emptiness after the click that is all anticipation and dread. “Dawn Hansen, you smell like strawberry shampoo and I think you oughta be my girl.” It’s a voice he doesn’t even remember having but it is him, sure as her face has broken into a grin so large she could swallow him whole.  “This one’s for you.”

It would not be accurate to say he cringes. Your whole body cannot cringe.

Natasha Romanoff begins to laugh.  Nothing, not even Motley Crüe’s Too young to fall in love, will drown her out.

He leans down over the hands that grip tightly to the ridge of the grill. “Fine, have a good laugh,” he says. This, of course, sets off another round of laughter. He does not join in.

“Strawberry shampoo?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he answers unable to keep the pettiness from his tone, “Where the fuck did you find that?”

“Strawberry shampoo?!” she hoots.

He picks up his rag. “That’s not going away anytime soon,” he mutters to himself as he tries to get off the worst of the engine muck. He’ll need a nail brush and a good hour with the soap to really make a difference.

She hasn’t switched off the music and he knows any request for her to do so will only result in the volume turned up to 11. The tape has eased into something hair metal ballady that he thinks might be Scorpions.  He is hoping if he keeps his head inside the engine that the decades old tape might just destroy itself out of embarrassment. 

“How old were you, Hot Shot?” she asks in a calmer voice.

He looks back at her. The laughter has made her eyes bright and brought color to her face, “Twelve maybe, can’t have been much more than that.”

He’d be lying if he said he knew for sure.  He’d be lying if he said he had any clear memories of that age that didn’t involve at least eleven beer cans on the kitchen table and the way his mother’s tears mixed with blood from her nose.  

“You sound like an infant.”

He sounds like maybe, just maybe, there were moments between being skinny, helpless and endlessly frustrated.  He sounds like a kid who didn’t know what was coming and still had dreams of seven minutes in strawberry scented heaven. 

“Yeah,” he says and he can hear his tone curdling in his mouth, “well we weren’t all learning fourteen languages and fifty ways to kill someone.”  He shouldn’t have said that.  If he had any kind of sense he wouldn’t have said that.  “Shut it off, Natasha.”

Her tone shifts too, “I want to know what ways baby you tried to woo a woman.” It’s a dance the way they talk to each other sometimes. You could listen to them skirt the very edge of battle with the way they dance. 

“‘pparently I made mixtapes and smelled her hair,” he says darkly, “I don’t know, Natasha. I didn’t get to be that kid much after that.”

“Dawn never got the tape.”

“Nope. Guess not.”

“Twelve?”

“Yeah.”  Could be, maybe it was earlier.  It’s in his file somewhere, the world can look now.  He hasn’t.  He is happier with the fog. “Can we not?”

“Okay,” she says and pushes down on the worn button with a barely recognizable square symbol.  The music stops.

“Okay.” 

He thinks better of following her out of the barn. 

She makes noise when she returns.  She doesn’t have to, she does it for his benefit.  “Almost finished if you wanna go in to town for….” he says as he pokes his head around the edge of the hood.  He stops. “What are you?” 

“I don’t have strawberry shampoo,” she shrugs. One shoulder is uncovered in a sweatshirt much larger than she is.  She has cut the neck out of it. “I made do.”  Her red hair is pulled into a ponytail on the side of her head.    

“You look ridiculous!” he says.  She has cut the feet out of thick, long socks.  He has no idea where she found them but they are now making do as leg warmers.  They should be 80’s pink, they are instead the kind of grey mottled color all his laundry becomes eventually. 

She puts a single finger up, stalling him as he strides towards her.  From between her breasts she extracts a tube of chapstick and begins to apply it, “Well if you…” she says indifferently.

“Come here, Molly Ringwald,” he growls.  She hits play on the tape deck before she pushes him up against the cab of the Ford. 

He starts at her bare shoulder and twists her in his arms to continue following the line of bone along her spine to behind her ear. She doesn’t smell like the cheap strawberry shampoo or cherry chapstick or the ubiquitous hairspray, she smells like Natasha.

Beneath her shirt he unhooks her bra, she assists pulling a strap out of the sweatshirt until he hears the plastic tube of lip gloss clatter against a panel of the truck.  His hand rushes up to replace the flimsy cup.  Exquisitely rounded, heavy and quickly pebbling he pulls her against him. She arches and places one of her hands into his hair.  She likes to pull at his hair.

Natasha Romanoff likes hair pulling. She likes when he gets grease on his biceps and she likes to wrap her legs around his waist and the control it gives her. 

Clint Barton likes it when she doesn’t always win.

He presses her down over the hood. He slides the shirt over her head. It goes easy, leaving her bare against the dusty finger smeared worn ford white.  He ditches the sweatshirt and steps closer knocking her thighs apart, wrapping his large hands around the top of her jeans and the smooth skin at her belly. 

Natasha will never let him win easily, she pushes back, grinding her ass into his groin with with an overheated intensity. If he lets her keep this up, and he could let her keep this up, she will win and this will be done.  He doesn’t want it to be done. 

He leans over her pressing his body over hers and hers into the truck, he growls, his hands on her hips tighten. She will be covered in grey finger prints by the time he is done.  She quietens, if it is only to calculate her next move.

He pulls back an inch or two to allow his fingers to make quick work of the buttons on her fly. When they are undone, he tugs and draws the denim down her legs until he is with them at the floor in supplication to the beauty of her.

He could kiss his way back up her legs, mouth every moment of her skin, he could take the time to make her cry his name. He loves the way her lips stretch around his name.  But he is aching to be inside her already and she is rising up on her forearms. 

He wipes his hands on his back pockets, places them both on her ass cheeks and when she pushes back to meet him he licks her through the moist cotton of her thong.  She draws in breath, harder than before.  It is either the prelude to the fight or a ceasefire. He sucks, she is like salt water and warm still air.  He pulls her apart, pushes fabric away and slides his tongue forward over the familiar geography.  When she pushes down to meet his strokes he is sure that this battle at least is his. 

His cock is unhappy with the confines of his own jeans. He flicks it up into his waistband as he continues lapping at her entrance and her clit beyond. She smells better than strawberry shampoo ever could and he is damn sure he’d never contemplated this when he was fashioning twelve songs into a clumsy love letter. 

He can feel her muscles drawing upwards as if they were all connected by string to her pelvic floor and the mewling sounds that escape her now drive him to faster and faster darts of his tongue and firmer pressure with his lips.  When she says his name, it is a low complaint that sounds filthy over the tinny sound of the mixtape. He sucks hard at the bundle of nerves until she shakes, his hands on her thighs and hers on the hood of the car the only things holding her up. 

His knee protests as he rises but it is nothing compared to the full ache in the jeans he fumbles with.  Natasha lifts herself from the hood, she turns her head to watch him. Pink cheeks and sweat curled hair escaping from the hastily constructed ponytail contriving to make her fresh faced and dissolute all at once. 

He pushes his jeans from his hips, takes himself in hand and with a single stroke thrusts up into her.  The sound that escapes her, he is sure is for his benefit.  On his next thrust, she takes his hand from her hip and places it on her breast.  Her neck curves as she tucks her chin to her chest, his callouses grazing against her nipple. 

 His rhythm builds, the wet slap of their skin meeting, the sighs and grunts they don’t control and the sounds of Def Leppard and Diamond Head failing to cover them at all. 

When he is close, the tightening heat growing, growling inside him she lifts, leans back into him, lets him wrap both arms around her pale dust and grease smeared skin until he is loosed inside her. 

They are an exhausted tangle; they balance against each other refusing to fall. As he softens inside her he thinks of the come down as a full body sigh, the perspiration on her skin as rainfall.

She comes to her senses before he does.  She always does.

She shoves him inside the cab of the truck and after pulling a ruined knot of jeans and socks from her feet climbs astride.  Her wicked smile is a good cover for the steering wheel at her back. 

Her mouth is as warm and wet as the smear she is sure to leave on his open jeans. He threads his hands into her hair and pulls the last of her wild curls from the hair tie.  Heat radiates off her skin but now he has time to be slow, now she can be in control. He spells out her name in the kisses.

There isn’t much room in the cab even with his seat pushed all the way back. She makes the slide off his lap look somehow elegant regardless. Even in the steam they created his body temperature is dropping. He wraps an arm around her. She leans back, resting her head against his shoulder. You wouldn’t know it to look at her but he can feel her heart still racing.

 “I’m leaving, Clint.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

 He takes her hand, twists it into his own, “I know I don’t get to keep you here forever.  It was the deal.”

 “Ross called us in,” she says.

 “Thunderbolt Ross?”

 Ross is the disgraced General who had a giant boner for destroying Bruce Banner.  He guesses with the fall of SHIELD, Ross is on the up and up again.  He’s a little incredulous that Stark and Rogers would call everyone in at Ross’s command but then again she has said that everything since Sokovia has been about appeasement. It’s good he’s out, he wasn’t very good at acquiescing even when it was Coulson and Fury and not General Thaddeus ‘monomania’ Ross.

 She sounds so tired when she replies, “There are consequences from Sokovia the Avengers need to deal with.”

 “With Ross?”

 “With SHIELD…” she begins.

 “Yeah.”  He nods sharply. “Gone.”

 She turns to him, “You could come to…”

 "…I’m retired,” he interrupts. He shakes his head, “I’m no Avenger.”

 “I know,” she says, clipped. “And you could be.”

 “Natasha, I’ll always have your back. All you gotta…”

 “…You’re retired.”  Her mouth hardens.  She looks down at their entwined hands.

 “Yeah,” he says sadly.  To four four time someone is singing that they don’t want to let you go. It sounds like it was recorded from a record player on the floor of the den. It sounds like another him sat a still as he could, trying not to breathe and hoping that this song could say something his own words could never do.

 “I’ll leave before…”

 “…You wake me,” he says lifting her chin, “You wake me before you go.”

 “Okay.”

 He pulls her further into him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, Omen, for the mixtape listing and a friendship built absurdly from an awkward crush. 
> 
> Dawn, you rock the known world. 
> 
> Too Young to Fall in Love, Motley Crüe 
> 
> Photograph, Def Leppard
> 
> You’re Not Alone, Twisted Sister
> 
> Don’t wanna let you go, Quiet Riot
> 
> Love Bites, Judas Priest
> 
> Still loving you, Scorpions 
> 
> Love ain’t no Stranger, Whitesnake
> 
> Call Me, Diamond Head
> 
> Burning Heart, Vandenburg


	5. Jet

“Barton,” Steve Rogers says looking not the least bit banged up. When he said that some of them would have to lose it, he always knew he’d be in loserville but he’d be lying if he didn’t admit that how bright eyed and bushy tailed the Captain looks grates on him. 

“Captain.”

Sam Wilson’s door across the way slides open.  Clint can see under the bars and Sam steps forward and then slides out like he isn’t exactly sure that there isn’t an electric field to crash into. He makes it look cool though.  He makes everything look cool.

“We’ll have you out in…”

Clint’s eyes snap back to the man in front of him, “Get the girl!”

“Wanda? We are working on…”

“So work faster,” he says.  His voice is clipped and tight. “Don’t stand here waiting on my cage.”

He hasn’t been able to get eyes on Wanda since they were dumped in here. He saw what they did with her first though.  Ross’s men are no better than Hydra scum, swagger and sadism straight out of Rumlow’s play book. He was willing to throw punches to get their all too eager hands off her but when she looked at him he knew, knew, right in the gut knew, she had already been slashed and burned by the thoughts in their heads.  He hates telepathy.  He hates that she gets the double dose of the grotesqueness of humanity.

Under those circumstances it should have come as something of a relief when they put the collar on her and all of that, all of everyone else’s noise went quiet.  But that’s just hope talking, isn’t it, Barton?  ‘Cause in real life, it’s like they put a hood over your head or they shut off your ears.  ‘Cause they collared her and now she knows what they’d do to her given the chance and she doesn’t have the strength to fight them off. 

“Clint we…” 

He shakes his head hard.  Her eyes just went dead and he’s seen that happen before in his dreams only they weren’t Wanda’s eyes, they were Natasha’s eyes, and the trapped, numbing nature of the raft is a great place for that to all get screwed up inside him. Captain America’s gonna have to be forgiving because all that mess is a big fuck off red mist right now.

“Get the girl!” he bites out, his hands above his head on the glass.  “They put her in some sorta anti-bark collar. She’s only here ‘cause…” he swallows hard.  He’ll have plenty of time to feel sick about that later, “get her out of here, Rogers.”

“Steve?”

He knows that voice, he’d recognize that voice quicker than he’d recognize his own. 

“Yeah?” Rogers turns his head looking over to where Wanda’s cage is. He doesn’t shift out of parade rest though.  He doesn’t give any outward sign they are on a timer.  They have got to be on a timer.

“Let me deal with the Hawk,” she says as she comes into view.  She doesn’t look at him though. “Mr. Lang thinks he can figure out the collar.”

Rogers smiles and nods, he is sure it is meant to be reassuring.  He lets his arms fall from the glass and steps back. He rolls his shoulders back trying to drop the tension he is holding.  He is not reassured.

She has widened her stance, wrapped a hand around her wrist.  He doesn’t look directly at her, watching instead Scott Lang bounce on his feet like a boxer as he searches through a tool kit. “I thought you were on team sell out?” he says.

“And I thought you’d retired,” she says, matching his disinterest. “One call from Rogers and you come in from the cold?”

He looks at her then, “He called.” And then he looks back into the spaces he’s been calling the courtyard if only as a small personal joke.

For a guy that did time, Lang seems to be on the manic side of giddy with his new found freedom.  Then again the Raft isn’t quite the social experience that your regular, run of the mill, cooperate for profit prison experience is.  There is dehumanizing and then there is dehumanizing. A place for maniacs, Stark had called it, before he went on his highly vocal rant that just about gave coordinates to the one piece of untarnished ownership he had left. 

She pauses.  He counts it as a win that she pauses. “Clint.”

“He called, Natasha,” he says. “You dropped the accords on me and didn’t say shit.” It’s blunt but then again so are they. Blunt instruments. He still can’t fully get his head around the fact that she was so willing to sign on to be another blunt instrument of the state.

Another door, to his left this time, slides open. It seems to be taking time they don’t have. He’s got eyes on Lang but Sam and Rogers are off where he can’t place them and she is standing there more like a guard than a savior. He can feel it all prevailing on his last nerve, when Wanda steps forward, her foot falls lighter than the rest of Team Cap even on the metal framework. 

“But we’re still friends, right?” Natasha says.

Wanda still has the collar on, it looks heavy and uncomfortable and she move stiffly. It’s a nightmarish difference for the girl who always seemed to be in motion.

“You okay, kid?” he says, lifting his chin.

She turns her body towards his cage, Lang moving with her. “I am tired.” 

“Lang, you got this?”

“I have a Masters in Electrical Engineering,” he says with a stretch of his neck and annoyed glance, “If I had my….” He twists something and then pushes into the collar, “I could… one more sec and…” he says half to himself, half to Wanda who has closed her eyes. “There!”  Lang says triumphantly. He looks like he expects applause.

The collar does nothing.  Clint raises his brows. Wanda opens her eyes, cutting them without moving towards the Antman. Natasha shifts her stance.

Finally, the collar cracks open.

Wanda Maximoff sags allowing Lang to grab her before she hits floor.  Scott Lang removes the collar, muttering that he has her as he goes. Clint doesn’t let his breath go until he sees Wanda’s hands begin to twist, familiar curling motions like a prelude to a belly dance.

“Wanda…” he starts, putting his hands against the smooth glass panel.  He doesn’t have a plan for what comes next but it probably has something to do with guilt and debts and…

She steadies herself and stands.  When she looks up at him, she has a fixed glare of certainty that has him preparing to end up at the bottom of a Vision hole. “Stop moping.”  

“You’re out, Barton” Sam Wilson calls down, his voice echoing slightly as the cage door starts to move beneath his arms.

When he steps out, Wanda’s eyes dart quickly towards Natasha and back to him before she says, “And you are still pulling your punches.”

He nods, “I think I liked it better when you were moping.” 

She rolls her eyes before her finger tips go to her temples pressing down hard, “Make amends,” she orders her accent and tiredness contriving to make it sound Stasi like.

“Amends?”  Natasha asks quietly. He still can’t quite look at her.  He guesses this is pulling his punches to the girl ignoring Scott Lang’s noisy examination of the collar.

“Ignore her, she’s a kid.”

“Who can move objects with her mind.”

“Yeah,” he says gruffly, “She coasts on that.”

He is pretty sure there is a small smile on her lips but to be sure he’d have to look.

“You were supposed to stay safe,” Natasha says, her voice is low enough that only he should be able to hear her.  Only him and the mind reader. 

“Givin’ up liberty for temporary safety?” he says and he can hear the gravel in it, the raw, acid reflux of the last few days.  He turns to face her properly then. “You think that’s me?”

“No,” she says coolly but she stands her ground. “You were out. You didn’t have to make that call.”

He forces himself down the steps rather than stepping into the personal space she has cultivated like a shield around herself. “You knew what call I’d make, you and Stark thought you’d make it for me,” he answers, “Just in case.”

“We gotta go,” Sam says from the blocks entrance gate.  Rogers is behind him, back to the proceeds, standing sentry.

“I brought my own ride,” Natasha answers, “I’ll take Barton.”

“You…”

“You are both giving me a migraine,” Wanda says shaking her head at the captain’s offer of support. “Go with Natasha.”

And that is exactly how he ends up in the back of a quinjet that he hasn’t asked if she stole from Tony Stark.  Some distance from the unnavigable location of the Raft, Natasha switches on the autopilot and swings the pilot seat around to face him. 

“Clint, oversight…”

“Oversight?” he says incredulously, “Widow? You know what they would have done to Wanda?” He shakes his head and then mutters darkly, “Yeah, you know.”

“Don’t call me Widow,” she snaps sharply. She stands. “We are weaker alone. This meant we could stay together.”

“At what cost?”

She shakes her head like he is naïve. “You’re angry.”

“No shit!” he yells, flinging his hands up.

“I came for you.”

“Yeah?” he says. “Still fuckin’ angry.”

He stands. She is the kind of still that he associates with fatalities. “But we’re still friends?”

Clint Barton has never known when to leave well enough alone.  Clint Barton has never backed down from a losing fight. Clint Barton is the first person to set his own life on fire.  He doesn’t smile, “You hit me pretty hard.”

He watches her, save for the blink you’d swear she was a statue. “I understand.”

In the instant she turns, he is talking. It pours out of him, thoughtless and incomplete. “Natasha,” he reaches for her, catching her upper arm and forgetting to let go, “We ain’t friends. I don’t get this angry about friends. You wanna take the lead, you run ops without clueing me in first, you think talking things through is a weakness?” Her eyes drop from his face.  There is a furrow between her brows less like concern and more like she is perplexed by his behavior.  “Fine,” he says releasing his grip, “Whatever. But, Man, your pragmatism gets you thinkin’ the ends justifies the means to the absolute wrong side of Machiavelli sometimes.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. She says nothing.

He shakes his head again and steps back. “And you didn’t call! Things went south and you didn’t call! It’s bullshit. And I love you so I’m fuckin pissed. I’m gonna be pissed.”

“For how long?”

He throws himself back down in the seat. He chuckles dryly. “You wanna give me at least till the end of this ride?”

She blows out a quick breath before looking back at him. “No.”  Before he can respond, she is giving orders, “Take off your clothes.”

He runs his hands through his hair, “I swear to god, Natasha.”

She rolls her eyes. Even in the anger he catches himself thinking how much he has missed her rolling her eyes at him. “We’re dumping them.  Saves searching them for trackers.” She gestures to an overhead locker, “There’s sweats in the…”

“…So not a ploy to get me naked?” he says.  He shifts pulling the blue prison jersey over his head.

“I came for _you_.”

He stares blankly at her for a moment and then it finally registers, “You’re angry with me?”

“You were supposed to be safe. The one thing was that you were safe.” He stands to remove the pants, fiddling with the drawstring.

“You’re pissed at me!” he announces.  Natasha steps forward and slams her open palm against his cheek. She has always had good follow through.  His head swings to the side.  His hand quickly follows covering the heated suggestion of her handprint. “Did you just slap me?”

“You call me Widow,” she hisses and suddenly she is flashing eyes and bile where she had been still and cool. “Machiavelli, you act like you did not get to make your choices…”

“…You slapped me!” he says again. 

“And, oh, I will do it again,” she says with acid, before turning towards the back of the jet.

He kicks off the pants, “What the fuck?”  He follows. “No, Nat, what the absolute fuck? You wanna go we can go.” It doesn’t matter that he is standing there in boxer briefs.  It doesn’t matter that he is probably now considered a terrorist by, oh let’s say, every major country in the world. What matters right this second is that the deadliest woman in the world slapped him. “Slapping?!” he repeats. 

She wraps her hand into a strap. He follows suit.  It always does to follow Natasha Romanoff when she goes for a weapon, cover or ground. He isn’t about to start ignoring that instinct. 

She hits the bay door. Her hair blows across her face and the roar of the engines and the cold air from the ocean below stalls the argument. He watches, hand griping the strap, as his uniform tumbles into the wide, rolling darkness. 

“I came for you,” she says when the bay door is sealed.

“Yeah, you keep saying.”

“Then why won’t you listen?” she says.

He remembers how she looked the first time he told her that he loved her, the mask and the panic in her green eyes. He remembers the whispered, ‘I can’t do without you.’

He’s so fucking dumb.

“I could have called,” he says flatly. This could have gone a different way.

“Yes.”

He steps into her space. She does not step back. “Your hair is different.” Every time he sees her it’s different but it is always red.

“Is that really what you want to say?” she says, her left eyebrow raises slightly as she says it. 

“No,” he says as he reaches for a wave of the red to sweep behind her ear. 

“Then shut up, ястреб.”

She kisses him.  It is painful. Not because it is teeth and fury, not because it is a continuation of the fight that he knows they have been having on some form or another since he put down his arrow and held out his hand. It is painful because it is the opposite of all of this.

How is it that lips moving against lips, tongues straining to find each other, breaths catching on each other never quite matched for rhythm, makes him feel like every moment he has watched her die? How is it that the scent of her all too reminiscent of blood draining from his body?

He wraps his arms around her, straining to pull her close enough to fill the gaps.  Her hands are in his hair but she does not pull. Natasha seems to be trying to gather him up into her. It isn’t enough.  He jerks his mouth from hers and holding her face between his hands he says, “Skin.” 

She frowns and nods sharply into his cupped hands. He leans back only to allow her access to the clips and straps of her vest.  She works fast, pulling apart the tac like a chemical spill drill.  He grips her hips in his hands.  His thumbs pressed hard into the padding of the black BDU fabric on her ass.  She shucks the vest.  He slides his hands up and under the under shirt lifting it over her head. 

Each inch of skin he uncovers, he can press against himself, helps the starve off the growing sense of unease. She knows it too.  The undue efficiency with with which she removes her bra and drags down her pants is an inelegant overture of what is to come. 

For all his posturing Tony Stark has not designed the jet for this task. The seat bites into the back of his naked legs with the added weight of her. Her knees balance on the metal edge and he knows she is ignoring the discomfort.  She lowers her head to him barely missing the locker that overhangs above.  He tips his head back as far as he can to regain contact. His hands slide over her back, feeling the muscle, tendon and bone shift beneath the surface of her skin as she raises herself up to position him.

And it is maddening, the wait, the anticipation, the not quite connection. And it is too soon and not the time.

She sinks down on to him. She makes a sigh as she goes, skirting the edge of too tight and too hot. Her sigh sounds like a cry. There are silver reflections in her eyes that thwart his need to see her. With each rise and fall she drags her breasts over his chest, hardened nipples tracing the plains of his muscles. 

His fingers are spread as wide as he can make them, measuring her, sketching her, memorizing the feel of her.  He presses his mouth and nose into the curve of her neck, breathing hard. It doesn’t take long for the rising, swelling need to overtake the frantic sense that he should stop and let them remain in this tableau forever, never to be separated again.  He joins her movements, snapping his hips and he pulls her head down, mouth meeting mouth. 

Her hands are on his shoulders and then as she collapses against him, her movements smaller and smaller, she slides one hand around the missing scar. He cries out.  She pants. It keeps paces with his heartbeat.  He wants to hold her hand where it is.

She shudders in his arms. He shifts only as much as it takes to slide the hair from her face.

“Hey,” he murmurs, smoothing down the waves of hair that she would otherwise use as armor, “why does this feel like goodbye?”

She turns her head, looking away, “I played it wrong. I wanted to keep us together.”

“The Avengers.”

“All of us,” she says, “It isn’t possible now. We aren’t safe.”

She looks out over the console, the cockpit window is almost opaque with the dark horizon and the dark ocean ahead.  There should be a line of demarcation. It feels wrong, it feels like choosing to enter a void. 

“Where are we headed, Nat?” he says, stunned into an intonationless whisper.

“ _We’re_ not headed anywhere.”

He shakes his head. “There has to…”

“There isn’t.”

She closes her eyes and tilts her head until it comes to rest on his shoulder.

“So it is goodbye?” he says again. She is still in his arms and yet her absence is growing inside him.  He is a thin body wrapped around a yawning sink hole and there is nothing that can be done about it.  The choice is clear.  The choice has always been clear.  “Okay. I’ll follow your lead.” He says swallowing hard against the rising lump in his throat.  In the end, when you can’t fight anymore the only thing that matters is the exit. He feels the gasp of air she takes; he knows it for what it is, a sob arrested in her chest.  His Natasha will not allow herself to fall.

For a single instant he wants to smile against her skin. He wants to pretend that he can make this moment, Natasha wrapped around him, Natasha holding herself upright refusing to give anything more to reality than she has already given, Natasha, his Natasha, red hair, green eyes, scars on her skin he knows with his fingertips and scars in her mind he knows the borders of… he wants to pretend it could last forever.

His eyes burn. His mouth twists. He tries to say the words without the pain tearing at each syllable, “But you come find me. You’re good at that. Come find me.”

He shuts his mouth hard. He swallows convulsively. There is something else he wants to say.  Something else that needs to be said.

She pulls her head from his shoulder. Her eyes are full, tears that could tumble over in a second. Her eyes are hers and hers alone.  She has not sunk downwards; she has not pulled the cover over her skin. The distance between them now is no larger. He searches her face. His lips trying to form the words, ‘It is not your fault.’ She is owed that much.

Instead she says, her hands on his face, “I love…”

And though it breaks him wide open he cannot let her do this alone, “…I know you do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made myself sad. 
> 
> This was not meant to go here. 
> 
> I am very angry at an absence of Clint I have to explain, Natasha and Clint for not being angry horny and... I am just very angry right now.
> 
> I realise it is a defence mechanism for my grief.

**Author's Note:**

> Just porn for the sake of it. And for Sonya and Firewater.


End file.
